


The Only Truth in the Darkness

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:51:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Idea that popped into my head, where Maria was the agent who did the testing in “The Only Light in the Darkness”, and caught Ward (because he’s not that good- not as good as her, lbr). Pre-show Ward x Simmons. [This is so much longer than I was planning. Whoops.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Truth in the Darkness

"So why are you here, Agent Ward?" Maria Hill kept her eyes on the monitor, only looking up when the agent strapped to the chair hesitated to answer. She narrowed her eyes, observing his body language. Something was definitely off.

"I’m an agent. It’s my duty."

The monitor in front of her turned red, a sign of deception. She placed a hand on the pistol at her back.

"I need you to give that to me again, Agent Ward."

"It’s my duty", he repeated, firmly, eyes never wavering from her own.

The machine stayed red. “A follow up question”, she said. “Agent Ward, are you associated with HYDRA?”

Grant’s eyes found the floor, and he took a breath before answering. “Yes. We all are. They’ve infiltrated the highest levels of our organization.”

A non-answer. She knew evasive when she heard it. She kept her hand on the gun.

"Are you HYDRA?"

"I am loyal to SHIELD", Grant stated, the desperation in his voice evident. The situation was dire enough to cause even the most loyal agents to feel doubt, and fear in the face of a death sentence were they suspected of being HYDRA. But she couldn’t take any chances. "I am loyal to Coulson, and my team."

The machine stayed red, but she only allowed herself a cursory glance before relaxing her features and removing her hand from the gun. She smiled at him, a gesture she hoped was convincing. He looked relieved.

"Alright, Agent Ward. Let’s get you your security badge."

She allowed him out of the room first, following behind him as they walked to her office. The other members of his team were assembled in the common area, no doubt waiting for his arrival.

She acted as they came upon her office door. Before Grant could turn around, she tased him in the back of the neck, causing him to sink to the floor. She hit him once, hard across his jaw and he blacked out. She pulled restraints out of her pocket and tied his hands, them proceeded to drag him into the nearest interrogation room. Once he was adequately confined, she went to tell Coulson.

"This is ridiculous", Skye repeated, for an impressive 10th time as the team walked the short distance to the interrogation room..

Coulson looked like he agreed, but stayed quiet. He, like Maria, knew they couldn’t take any chances.

"You think he’ll talk?", he asked Maria instead, stealing a glance at his team as he did. Fitz looked incredulous on Grant’s behalf; Trip unsure. Jemma had her eyes fixed to the ground, still processing the shock of the accusation, or perhaps, the idea that it could be true.

"He should", she replied, her voice steely. "I dosed him with as much sodium thiopental as I could without killing him.”

She allowed the others to observe through the window in the adjacent room, but only let Coulson accompany her during the interrogation, with the understanding she would be asking the questions. Grant was regaining consciousness as they arrived, and he struggled furtively against the restraints.

Coulson stood against the far wall, arms folded over his chest, as he watched Grant. Maria started the interrogation.

"Are you an agent of HYDRA?", she asked.

Grant blinked up at her drowsily, then looked to Coulson. He turned back to Maria. “Yes.”

Coulson closed his eyes and bite the inside of his cheek, in an attempt to keep from reacting, from lashing out and asking why. Why-  _how_  could be do this to him, to them?

"What is your current HYDRA mission?" Maria was controlled, cold. Coulson was grateful.

"To obtain the password to open the Bus’ hard drive, or, if unable to, abduct Skye and take her to Garrett."

Maria turned to Coulson, and indicated her head towards the door. He followed her out into the hallway. “I’m sorry, Phil.”

He shook his head. “I never even suspected”, he told her, dissapointed in himself. “I was too caught up with… I was an idiot.”

Maria put a comforting hand on his shoulder, and gave him a moment to collect himself, then opened the door to the observation room.

Skye was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees pulled up against her chest. Her head rested back against the wall, her eyes closed, and her cheeks wet. Trip looked furious, and he was glaring at Grant through the window. Fitz was devastated, the betrayal hitting too close to home for a man who didn’t make connections easily and had considered Grant a friend. Jemma, Maria realized, was no longer in the room.

"Where is Agent Simmons?"

They all looked up in surprise, as though they hadn’t heard the door open and them enter. Too distracted by their own reactions to the truth to give notice to anything else. Fitz looked around in confusion. “I don’t know. She was just here a minute ago.”

Maria left Coulson with the others, to offer whatever words of comfort or promises of retribution he could, while she sought out the missing scientist.

"Agent Simmons?" She found her curled up on the couch in the common area. Jemma’s head snapped up at her name, and she relaxed marginally when she saw Maria. 

"Yes?"

"You weren’t with the others", Maria said, the unspoken question obvious.  _Why wasn’t she with the others?_

Jemma shook her head, her lip trembling slightly as she answered. “I didn’t think there was anything else to hear. He admitted to being HYDRA. That’s that, I suppose.”

Maria observed Jemma, her eyes running over the other woman’s face for any sign of what she was thinking, what she was feeling. Shock was evident, as was sadness. But there was more, lurking just below the surface, that Maria just couldn’t get a read on.

"Did you ever suspect…?"

"No." Jemma shook her head firmly. "Never." She took a deep breath and exhaled it noisily.

"Let’s get back", Maria said. "You all need to hear what he has to say."

When they returned to the room, Maria took a moment to address the team before returning to the interrogation. “I understand that this is difficult for you all.”

She realized, not for the first time, how young the people gathered in front of her were. She’d voiced her concern to Fury in the beginning, when she’d been briefed on Coulson’s team. He argued that young blood wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and that they would have Coulson and May to direct them. He wasn’t wrong. They had done some good work, but they’d also struggled, needlessly in her mind. More training, more oversight, might have prevented the close calls- may have prevented Ward getting so close, staying hidden for so long. But now wasn’t the time for what-ifs.

"Before we continue," she said, eyes drifting over all of them to confirm they were listening, "we need to be clear on one thing". She pointed at Ward (no longer agent; never an agent of SHIELD) through the window. "That man in there… Is not your friend. Is not your co-worker, or your partner. He is a traitor and a terrorist." Her voice was hard, and the other’s reacted physically to her words. Jemma closed her eyes tightly, regulating her breathing. Skye made no attempts to hide her feelings, flinching back at the words. Trip clenched his jaw, his eyes alight with anger and betrayal. Fitz closed his fists at his sides, a showing of aggression Maria hadn’t expected.

Coulson hadn’t been looking at her as she spoke, and he didn’t look at her now. He didn’t look at anything, but rather stared blankly at the wall. She didn’t blame him; she knew what this betrayal felt like. She knew how many “agents” had revealed themselves to be HYDRA during the Helicarrier launch, and subsequent attack. They’d been colleagues, and friends, and she felt sick every time she thought about the personal details she had shared with them, the meals, the pleasantries.

She didn’t ask for Coulson to follow, or wait for him, when she left the room and returned to Ward. “Who is your handler?”

"Garrett", Grant answered, his speech slightly slurred from the effects of the drug.

"Do you know where he is?"

"No. I was ordered to make contact once I got the password."

She paused. The next step would be contacting Garrett, posing as Ward.  Arrange a meet. Take him down.  _Hard_ , Maria promised silently.

"I can’t-" She jerked her head to look at him sharply. She didn’t ask a question, but he was talking. Not entirely unexpected; the drug was intended to loosen tongues, after all.

"I can’t betray him", Grant finished weakly. "I owe him too much."

Maria regarded him silently.

"You have no idea what I’ve done." He had the decency to look ashamed, not that Maria felt any sympathy for him. There were too many dead agents, too many lies. Too much blood on his hands.  _Victoria._  The name came to her unbidden, and a sharp stab of anger shot through her.

"Everything you told us was a lie.  _You_  killed Agent Hand, and those agents at the ice box. You would have killed your team.” They needed to hear it. “Would you have killed Skye, if you’d been ordered? If it’d been necessary?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

"And the others? Coulson? Fitz? May? Trip?" She followed a hunch, an idea that came to her suddenly, and left out Simmons.

"Yes."

"And Agent Simmons?"

There was no hesitation. “No.” The response surprised him, and he met her eyes in what appeared to be fear. Whether he was afraid of the answer, or that she now knew he had a weakness, she wasn’t sure. But she had been right.

"Are you romantically involved with Agent Simmons?"

The question was necessary. If he was, Simmons needed to be questioned too. Even though Maria had cleared her after her own test.

"No."

"Have you  _ever_  been romantically involved with Agent Simmons?”

"Yes." He paused. "But she was just Jemma then."

Maria looked briefly to the observation window, before turning her attention back to Ward. He could give her answers, but what she needed was details. And someone else could give her those.

Jemma was standing out in the hall, leaning against the observation room door, when Maria left the interrogation room.

"We need to talk", Maria told her, and Jemma nodded in agreement.

Maria started towards the observation room door, but Jemma shook her head. “Not in there.” Maria wondered briefly what the other’s reactions had been, to have caused her to flee to the hallway. 

Maria led them to the common area, and they sat across from each other at the table.

"When?"

"Five years ago."

"How long?"

"Two weeks."

Answers. Now for details.

"Tell me what happened."

The girl shrugged. “We met in a pub”, she said with a bitter laugh, and Maria could see the tears start to form. “I went home during some time off, and I met him in a pub. He bought me a drink. We spent the next two weeks together, and then I left. We went our separate ways, and that was it. I thought I’d never see him again.”

She took a ragged breath and exhaled shakily. “When I heard Agent Ward was joining us on the Bus, I didn’t make the connection, because we never exchanged last names. He was just Grant when I knew him. And then he was just…  _there_. He was an agent, and Fitz was standing next to me, and I did the only thing I could. I pretended I didn’t know him, and he went along with it. We didn’t talk about it- about before, for a long time. Once we did, we decided that the past was the past, and no one needed to know.”

Maria regarded her critically, and found that she believed her. She sighed back into the chair, and crossed her arms. “Well, they know now.”

Jemma nodded, worrying her bottom lip.

"I may need you", Maria told her, leaning forward suddenly. Jemma’s eyes widened in surprise. "You’re personal", Maria explained. "Personal to him. I may need to use that."

 _Oh._  Jemma understood. The thought, everything about the situation really, made her uneasy, but what else could she do. She nodded.


End file.
